Copilot in Action: Real Wins and Pitfalls in M365

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to become an MVP. The link is in the shownotes. With that, let's get on with the show.

00:00:35 Mark Smith
Welcome back to the Microsoft Innovation Podcast. Today, we're heading to Japan where our guest is doing something pretty remarkable. Please welcome Joshua, Director of training at Voltage Learning. Joshua equips educators and developers with real world strategies. To harness Microsoft's AI and cloud tools, bring innovation and impact at the intersection of technology and learning. Welcome, Joshua.

00:01:02 Joshua Jones
Hey, thank you for having me here.

00:01:05 Mark Smith
Good to have you on on the podcast. Always love. You know, getting to some background on you before we start. So food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

00:01:14 Joshua Jones
Great. Let's see. We can start with family and fun. So actually, I'm joining today from Hong Kong. So I'm on a little bit of a trip just here in Hong Kong, taking it out. It's my second time visiting. Really like the area and to travel and see new place. This is so here with my family too, joining live from a hotel room somewhere in Hong Kong.

00:01:38 Mark Smith
Nice.

00:01:40 Joshua Jones
I guess food, food. Goes along with that, too. I love food from all over the place. So. I love eating local food here. I love eating food in Japan. I love trying food from all over the world. 

00:01:54 Mark Smith
So you you're. Quite unique in in the MVP community in that you're where did you originate from before going to Japan?

00:02:02 Joshua Jones
Before Japan, I was living in Las Vegas, but I've been living in Japan for about. Altogether, almost seven years now.

00:02:13 Mark Smith
Wow. So you American?

00:02:15 Joshua Jones
Yeah, yeah. I'm originally from the United States. I'll probably be in Japan for a very long time. So I'm I'm almost pretty much claiming Japan. As far as that goes.

00:02:25 Mark Smith
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. I I love Japan. I've I've visited Tokyo and then out to Mount Fuji. And I've also, I've spent one year. I spent I I-9 times. I went to Hong Kong for work in one year. So I I know Hong Kong pretty well and I love Hong Kong as a as a region. Yeah.

00:02:44 Joshua Jones
Yeah, we're on Hong Kong island side. Time.

00:02:46 Mark Smith
Nice. Nice, nice. Nice. And So what are what has been the highlights in Hong Kong?

00:02:52 Joshua Jones
This time we've just been taking a little bit more slow. It's been stormy. So we've just we've just been relaxing. But we've been able to go to a couple of museums and do a little bit more of the indoor activity side of things this time.

00:03:06 Mark Smith
Nice, nice. Has it changed much? Isn't like I kind of was there for the transition of when the Chinese Government, you know, took over. And I mean, I think I was last there like 2015, 2016 maybe. And I know a lot has changed since then.

00:03:29 Joshua Jones
Yeah, I would say that a lot has probably changed. I've probably only experienced after the transition. So we would have to compare notes side by side. But I think that. There's a lot less people who are speaking English now because of the secondary language being taught in school. From what I understand is now Mandarin. Rather than English.

00:03:49 Mark Smith
Ah, interest interest.

00:03:50 Joshua Jones
I think one of the biggest differences.

00:03:53 Mark Smith
OK, OK. Still plenty of great food outlets though, right?

00:03:57 Joshua Jones
Yeah, it's still delicious. So no complaints.

00:04:02 Mark Smith
Very nice. Very nice. What's top of mind for you from a tech perspective? What's been your focus this past year and and what's your focus kind of for the rest of the year?

00:04:12 Joshua Jones
Oh, I would say that of course, AI. It kind of feels like in inevitable pitfall that we all end up talking about is going to be AI. But I'm also training on AI originally. So I have been training on AI for the majority of my training career. I just feel like that's where I'm getting most of the requests to begin with, so I do everything from end user experience in copilots to citizen developer experiences in code post studio and then also just regular Azure AI developing too. So. All across that. Spectrum, I usually end up there the most.

00:04:51 Mark Smith
Yeah, which which is really across Microsoft's, you know, built by an extend type story. Lauren, tell me particularly the the work you've done in M365. Copilot. What? What has it been to date? What? And kind of what are the successes you've seen? What the pitfalls, what are the cautionary tales that have come out from your work? Particularly around M365 copilot. So I would say that at the very beginning, a lot of it was exploring the tool with early adopter type companies and there was a lot of ohh well, you know this feature doesn't work. Oh well, you know, it's still early technology and now there has been some time for the dust to settle and so. Some of these companies are just now even approaching copilot. Not everyone was adopting quite as early. But it's still interesting to see like before, you couldn't reliably ask copilot to do this in Excel, you would you. You knew it would, it wouldn't give you the right results that you needed, whereas now you could very probably show people like look, it's able to go and do this for you. And I think that difference is very interesting over time. Teaching the same content very frequently because. The common pitfalls of things such as like. Copa is not very good at counting or numbers. Seeing those improve overtime and being pleasantly surprised is is probably one of the most fun parts about teaching and demos and and showing People.

00:06:20 Mark Smith
So outside of Excel where where do you see copilot shining?

00:06:26 Joshua Jones
My favorite thing to do with copilot is show people a demo in whiteboard and loop because I feel. Wow, this is good because I I I thought you're going to say Microsoft forms because that's a common one because you know you can craft the form into reality in a in a heartbeat type thing looks amazing.

00:06:45 Joshua Jones
That was handy too, yeah.

00:06:46 Mark Smith
Yeah, but tell me about loop and and what was the other one loop and why?

00:06:52 Joshua Jones
Keyboard.

00:06:53 Mark Smith
White boy, tell me about that.

00:06:55 Joshua Jones
Yeah, I think it's a really stepped on feature. I think that not enough people are realizing that you can get some ideas started in whiteboard. So it gets you 6 sticky notes at a time based off of the prompt that you're giving and the use case that I'm always showing companies. Is. Well, first of all, not very many companies are using whiteboard during meetings, so we usually have to start there. And hey, you know, you'd use a whiteboard in a regular planning session, like an up physical whiteboard. But not everyone can be there in person to see your physical whiteboard, and those notes don't don't stay right, they get erased. So first you set the stage and have everyone understand the value of the digital whiteboard that people from remote can also see. And you can save and take notes on and then you show them. Well, have you? Ever been in a planning session and? No one has any ideas at all, and it's just radio silence. And you're like, OK. Who's going to go first? No one. So you can like probably go 1st and you can get some ideas actually on the board. And then from there humans are really good at taking like the ideas that are there and connecting it to something else, like a related idea and saying, well, this reminded me of this. And I think it gets people really talking. So that's the one that I think is really fun. A lot of people don't realize that whiteboard has a copilot feature and. It's. Something that a lot of people enjoy using once they know about it.

00:08:23 Mark Smith
I love it. Now tell me about loop because I'm a I'm a massive power user of loop, but I don't really use it extensively for AI.

00:08:30 Joshua Jones
Yeah, so loop, of course you can take the whiteboard session that you had and you can get copilot. You can summarize that session into a loop component for you, which is very fun. So you can take that and you can share it with other people and you can comment on the meeting afterwards live. But also if you have your own. Loop page you can generate that with Cole pilot. My favorite thing to do with that is you can get a template that. Is. Pretty robust. You don't have to do a lot of formatting at all, so Luke has already had templates. For a while or you can just fill in the information to all the tables and stuff, but they might not have a template for every use case, and so being able to use copy to say hey, I want a page that will help me with everything I need to open a new diner, right? So you have like the the the preamble like the concept of the Diamond Diner explaining. All of the information and then you have like A to do list that copilot creates for you so. Without very much setup at all, you can just start the actual project with people and you're not wasting their time on the formatting. This copilot can help you out there.

00:09:43 Mark Smith
It's it's so interesting you say that because. My experience with formatting, and let's say I just used Copart the other day to format a Word document and. It couldn't right? So. And I think about the outputs when I've used copilot with PowerPoint and I'm like this. You know, my expectation is here and it is in 1980s, right. And what are delivering me here? I would never put. And, you know, I've heard some people go well. Hey, it only will get you 80% there. You've gotta do the last 20%. Where I feel a lot of people are wanting the last 20% done and not the first 80%. You know when it comes to putting Polish on a PowerPoint and and what I found frustrating is that lack of. I've been able to for AI to really interact with formatting, being that one it shouldn't with access to the software know exactly all the parameters you know from nested you know, bulleting list etcetera like in legal documents. It should be brilliant at at finding that structure and. Being able to apply it because one Microsoft owns the code base to their own copilot, right? So you'd think there would be this massive rich interplay and it's not there. And and I know it might come in time, but that's interesting that you say that within. Within loop, that formatting functionality is working well.

00:11:13 Joshua Jones
I think it does. I think what it probably is doing is it's playing off of existing templates and it's probably taking what the user wants and finding a close match and then just editing that, that's my guess.

00:11:26 Mark Smith
Which is brilliant. The the other interesting they've found is that the is when we think about M365, copilot, and particularly in its interaction with the productivity suite of products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Loop, etcetera, is that each of them have quite different engineering teams supporting them from Microsoft side and. We're talking about geographically dispersed as well all over the world. I had an MVP on the other day in a country in Eastern Europe. Who's that local Microsoft Development Centre does all the word features and. That's all they do. And and so therefore you've got these kind of different level. And so I see automatically polarized, I can't get good for batting in anything because I didn't get it in one or two of the products, but that might not be the case.

00:12:18 Joshua Jones
Yeah, I think that's the thing too is. That. For us as the end user, we see copilot as one tool. And we only see it as the one tool that has been put into everything. But like you just mentioned, it's being developed by many different teams under the same branding. And so that's why it can lead to different. As and unexpected consequences, I also have a very big love hate relationship with PowerPoint. Obviously, I think especially US type of people who are presenting or teaching with PowerPoint often we kind of have high expectations already to begin with. So.

00:12:55 Mark Smith
You know, and things like animation transitions morphing and then what you can do with you know there's PowerPoint MVP's and like I'm thinking of a guy in Sydney, Australia as an MVP. And when you look at his PowerPoints, they are like watching a movie. They are just. So you wouldn't even you would go this this PowerPoint if you're just seeing the presentation layer because they are so epic. They're so engaging. They're so drawing you and you know that's definitely not death by PowerPoint. And so they've obviously manipulated the tools that Microsoft have provided in the application to amazing. Effects. I don't know if you've seen often there's if you do search on TikTok for PowerPoint or even shorts on real reels, etc.

00:13:42 Joshua Jones
I love watching PowerPoint. Works.

00:13:44 Mark Smith
You're amazing, right? Like what people can do to bring the tool to life. And I'm like, hang on a second, you own the code base of this you've got. You've got good examples out in the market of what people can do. Creativity from a creative perspective.

00:13:59 Joshua Jones
Yeah.

00:14:00 Mark Smith
Train AI on that copilot on that. And man, what you could create is people that you know created something phenomenal, like even things like, you know, slide masters. Most people don't know about them, know most people. Like I outsourced recently a slide master for my business. And I could tell straight away by what they returned. They didn't understand what. Headmaster. No. They didn't understand the layering. They didn't understand that if you fix something in the master, you can't edit it. If you've done it wrong, you can't edit it. When you wanna add into it, stuff like that, where I would think that it's that's an opportunity for copilot to really become a rock star and lift everybody's presentation qualities to the next level, you know.

00:14:44 Joshua Jones
I don't know if. You noticed they actually had to walk back some features too, because they weren't as stable, so there has been some discussion about it. Some people did notice where the very early days of PowerPoint you could be a little bit more specific, like do this for me or perform this action. And PowerPoint would have mixed results, but at least try. But I think what the development team ended up deciding from what I understand is that. The mixed results wasn't really what they wanted. They wanted consistency and so until they can get it right, they walked a few features back and copilot actually stopped doing as much as it could with. With action command. So things like delete this slide, it doesn't. It doesn't dare do that for you anymore. Right.

00:15:33 Mark Smith
Right. You know, and that's another thing. You know, why wouldn't they put into PowerPoint? Just as to digress a trash bin that if you had to delete this slide, you could still go back and recover it and only if you did like a full, you know, package for for production. Would it clean out those artifacts that weren't, you know, need? You know, we digress. Tell me about what do you know about Microsoft Graph? And and copilot. And that story. Yeah.

00:16:00 Joshua Jones
I know that nobody really talked about graph at all until copilot came along, right? Yeah. So now now we have to actually explain what graph is to people before I I like once over the documentation. It wasn't super relevant to me until I was like, oh, I'll never really have to talk about this with anybody anymore. And then copilot comes along. It's like, OK now.

00:16:05 Mark Smith
Yeah.

00:16:19 Joshua Jones
I have to explain this to everybody.

00:16:21 Mark Smith
How do you talk about it?

00:16:23 Joshua Jones
The well, I think the easiest way is to. It's kind of, you know, they have a lot of different graphics that kind of show this web of the different data points that you would have the easiest. Example I usually. Draw on is if you're making a calendar event inside of Outlook, you know that it automatically syncs to your teams, right? Or there has to be a way for those two tools to communicate with each other. And sync the data and So what that is in the background is that's Microsoft Graph and I usually start from there kind of get the idea of the tools need to communicate and then. Copilot uses those same runways in order for it to go and find the data it needs for you as well. And because of that, it has the same access as you, the user. So copilot doesn't magically get some sort of overreach. It's not going to help you with accessing data you're not supposed to access. Security team. Properly setting up permissions provided.

00:17:22 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And honours. DLP permissions and any other number of tooling. There's about 5 different security tools that Microsoft provide in the stack to make sure that you can protect. Access rights and and what it can do, totally agree. What's your? You know, as we're as we're we're drawing to an end. Here. But tell me what's your. Personally, what are? How are you using the tools to make you more effective?

00:17:56 Joshua Jones
Let's see. How am I not? Using it. I feel like I. Like what I what? Use so much it a lot.

00:18:00 Mark Smith
I I didn't say make you more productive on purpose. I want to be effective rather than productive.

00:18:05 Joshua Jones
Sir uh, let's see if. I'm trying to be effective with my copilot use if I'm being very honest, I use the non licensed version of Coldplay quite a bit actually, just because I have.

00:18:20 Mark Smith
So chat, we're talking about chat.

00:18:22 Joshua Jones
Just as is sometimes I've. I've found that because I have. Of. I I because I have so many other past chats for it to reference and it has so much of a sampling of what type of responses I want. I find that it's pretty consistent in giving me exactly what I want, whereas and this is, it's actually funny too. I have a separate account that is not my main account that I would rather use there because I started using Copa. There at the very beginning. And I just. Copy paste, copy paste type of of of work. I'd rather do it there, which is completely against everything I I teach to be honest. So it's a little bit of a guilty confession. But of course, if I need to do something that is based in context in my work organization, then I do go and I do it on that account. But a lot of the time I just want to bring the context myself. I feel like sometimes that's. Even easier and I I like the the type of replies that copilot is is giving me in. That chat I do a lot of.

00:19:23 Mark Smith
Nice. And now I just want to clarify, are you talking about M365 copilot chat, which is not licensed with $30 SKU or are you talking about the you know, Windows Live? Version of copilot, which is your consumer grade version of copilot.

00:19:41 Joshua Jones
I'm actually talking about a separate isolated personal account called pilot that I like to use. So I'll keep everything there like let's say I need to translate something. I'd rather just copy and paste the Japanese text into there and have it translated into English or other way around too, and then just check it. The output and make sure it's accurate rather than doing it inside of the graph based chat, I find that. It gets a little bit overzealous sometimes and tries to find relevant files like. Thank you. That's that's great. But that's not what I need right now. I just need the output, so I try and keep it simple and lightweight.

00:20:19 Mark Smith
What's been your ohh? Wow moments with AI and your. I can't believe how awesome this is.

00:20:26 Joshua Jones
Recently, a copilot has been. Both in the 365 graph based chat and everything as well has been very happy to oblige in making. Making CSV files or PDFs which I think is very cool, so the output is just right there for you. So I said make a list of every country by continent as a CSV file and it was there instantly like I didn't have to do anything which was pretty cool to see. Not even not too long ago it would have said. Here's how you can do this or. Here is a table. Paste this into Excel and do it yourself. Dumb be lazy. But now it now it just kind of spits out the CSV file which is pretty cool or it'll make a PDF as well. So I think that the capability for it to start and and provide files for you in the specified format and not really say Oh well you have to be inside of Excel and you have to have this license like it feels more flexible. In some areas than it used. To be outside a.

00:21:28 Mark Smith
Copilot and the Microsoft offering. What other? AI tools do you use?

00:21:34 Joshua Jones
I have been experimenting with a tool called perchance. So perchance is kind of more of a hobby AI tool for me, but you can do. You can create multiple characters and then you can have them interact in a novel type of storytelling way. So what I'll do is I'll set up different characters and I can define their attributes. Kind of the same way you would with system prompts and everything for creating an agent. And so I can create all these characters and put them onto a stage and I give either my characters prompts or narrators prompts and then I can see how the characters would react rather than having to create all of the lines myself. I think it makes for a very engaging type of storytelling. So way more into the hobby territory of anything but yeah.

00:22:26 Mark Smith
Brilliant and I love. That so that's perchance.org, right?

00:22:29 Joshua Jones
I think it was dot. Org yeah. For a chance. That was a lot required. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just. I just gotta. I I care. Generator. Yeah, I love it. I. Love it. Very, very cool.

00:22:39 Joshua Jones
One of the character templates they have is a is a a hole punch for your desk office.

00:22:45 Mark Smith
Yeah.

00:22:47 Joshua Jones
So you can have the AI reply to you as an office tool.

00:22:50 Mark Smith
Wow. Wow. Wow. It's. And I've just ran it on a tattoo design as an example and very cool. Very cool.

00:22:59 Joshua Jones
Yeah, it's all the fun.

00:23:01 Mark Smith
Anything else?

00:23:02 Joshua Jones
Anything else that I'm doing? I like a lot of the graphic design type of stuff too, so designer. I've been playing around with that and I've been using it to help make graphics and put things together for things like summits that we have. We have events coming up in October and I wanted to make sure I had all the graphics together so. Sometimes I help it like here's my idea and I've got kind of a rough draft, but I want you to help Polish this and it does this surprisingly good job, so I've been. I've been I've been using that to help create images for like the Tech Boost summit that we're having in October, and it's been helpful.

00:23:40 Mark Smith
Nice, Joshua, it's been so good talking to you. I've learned heaps. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:23:45 Joshua Jones
Yeah. Thank you for having me been good to. Talk to you.

00:23:52 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guyuy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.